Wednesday, April 23, 2003

Support raising tobacco tax

The price of a package of cigarettes goes to the people who profit from nicotine addictions. It is only our tax, 12 cents, that helps the people it hurts.

My husband and I have never been smokers but we have paid a terrible price for the addiction of others. We both had to stand by helplessly and watch our fathers (the ones who protected us as children) die the slow suffocation of emphysema. We both watched our mothers die often painful and undignified deaths of tobacco-related cancers.

My throat cancer, a smoker's cancer, left me with constant fatigue. I learned that knowing not to smoke isn't enough. You have to know not to sit in it, either.

My limitations are now my husband's burdens. After his being a POW in the Hanoi Hilton, I was concerned about the long-term costs of the beatings and deprivations he had endured. But it would be the costs of other people's tobacco smoke that would actually cause him the worst pain in his life.

Smokers don't want to think about the price paid by others, especially by the people who love them the most. Somehow, 58 cents doesn't seem like too much to ask.

Kathie Cheney

Peachtree City